Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Reply to @Rocky: Thanks for the suggestion and the kind words, Rocky.
Like you, I'm a bit concerned about perverse structural incentives: if your incentive is to generate the greatest number of clicks, certain messages become economically suicidal …
The fund industry, collectively, owns 35% of all domestic equity. Jack's pissed with what he sees as the systematic betrayal of investors by a closed corporate culture that rewards short-term thinking with breath-taking compensation and with Vangua…
For what interest it holds, we'll share Charles's long/short data and the recommendations from a number of L/S fund managers as part of the July update. That doesn't cover the gamut of "alternative" funds but might give you a boost.
More soon,
Da…
Reply to @CathyG: Hi, Cathy!
We're sure trying to figure out a good way of handling the data. In general, I'm perfectly comfortable sharing it with folks who are comfortable with Excel, understand the definitions of the various measures and ... we…
In vino veritas, dude. And if you've ever had the opportunity to pick up some "Two Buck Chuck" at Trader Joe's, you'll even recognize the glint of value investing in the wine world.
David
The short version: over the past 12 months, gold-rated large-blend and intermediate-term bond funds have outperformed their benchmark indices. Golden large-growth and large-value funds also outperformed the S&P 500. No word on how they perform…
Reply to @Old_Joe: It's coming.
We have risk profiles of something like 7700 in a series of spreadsheets (divided by age of the fund). I was reluctant to post the .xlsx file by itself. One reason was that many folks who find a 125 page document w…
from the Artisan website: "Artisan Partners will launch a new active equity fund, Artisan Global Small Cap Fund (ARTWX) on Tuesday, June 25, 2013. The fund will be managed by the Artisan Partners Global Equity team."
Reply to @willmatt72: Heigh ho, and welcome!
Also: no. I have turned indolence into an investing art form. I tend not to track my portfolio as frequently as I once did. The only time I recall market pressure triggering repeated sells on my part…
Hi, john!
I'm doing what I pretty much always do: adding regularly (almost all of my accounts are set on auto-invest) to my established portfolio. Artisan, FPA, RiverPark, Seafarer, T Rowe ...
Morningstar's market valuation estimate is construct…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Hi, Max!
As Andy's note implies, it's not terribly difficult to get answers from Stephen. Drop him a note and you'll get an honest reply. We've talked about the railroads stake, for instance, which came down to "I think I…
If you haven't done so already, you might look at http://www.ftportfolios.com/Retail/Cef/CefPriceHistory.aspx?Ticker=FEO. It displays the NAV/market/discount by month, but you can download the history of the fund back to June 01, 2007. The "blood …
Nice people. Really solid performance. Probably a limited amount of distinctiveness in the approach. No assets. Inexplicably high minimum. Wouldn't make sense to launch an institutional fund only if you had, well, institutions lined up and wait…
Reply to @mnzdedwards: (chuckles) I think you're safe on that front.
I have been thinking of marketing a nice line of MFO-branded linens (Owl Towels?), small household appliances and cookware. Maybe an upscale print pub, MFO Living?
David
Reply to @Old_Joe: Value captures substantially less downside than the market does (70-90% of downside, depending on the time frame) and Equity Income captures substantially less than that (40 - 65%). But Value captures 85-90% of the upside while E…
Curious, indeed. I met at Morningstar with Mr. Yockey, who seemed relaxed and in good spirits. He wasn't able to discuss a fund in registration (and, on principle, I did not ask) but our general conversation didn't seem to signal anything terribly…
Reply to @Old_Joe: A thought rather than a recommendation: perhaps American Century Value (TWVLX)? Same manager, better returns, one-fifth the size, lower yield, lower turnover, comparable cost. Mr. Davidson helps run four funds for American Centu…
Reply to @Charles: That is always the question with a portfolio hedge, I guess. You can always keep 5% of your long-term money in (say) a bear market fund, bleeding annually until it's suddenly brilliant, or you can make a timed purchase just at th…
It's not "PIMCO Real Estate."
It's PIMCO Real Estate Real Return. The difference is more than semantic. All of the PIMCO Real Return funds are designed as inflation hedges, investing in TIPs and another asset class that might benefit from rising …
Reply to @BobC: I had a chance to listen to David Herro answers a few questions at a breakfast last week, sponsored by Litman Gregory. (Bracing coffee - about the consistency of motor oil - but sucky snackage.) Herro notes that he had 20% of his fl…
Reply to @Old_Joe: Always fascinating to track these statements back.
Uwe Parpart is a heavyweight in international finance and formerly of Kantor Fitzgerald, which sued him when he and three colleagues left for ReOrient. (He won). He's also auth…
Reply to @BobC: "[T]here is no denying they are smart ... "
Uhhh .... a PhD alone certifies that you know almost everything about almost next to nothing. Some folks with PhDs are also brilliant, curious, reflective, thoughtful and wise but mere po…
You might check under the "Funds" tab. With few exceptions, the funds were profile represent the universe that's off of Morningstar's radar: records of less than three years and/or fewer than $100M AUM when they're first profiled, often though not …
Investment News decorously eliminates all of Bogle's references to his disagreements with the current management of Vanguard; there were several in the talk. Vanguard has been lobbying, for example, against the proposal for a floating NAV for money…
Reply to @MikeM: Guts are dangerous things. We're forever telling ourselves stories, often at the expense of the facts.
One of the guys I met is wildly successful, but I might be hesitant to let him in my house. One seemed an earnest, dedicated n…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Actually we talked about our children a lot, MIchelle's inability to cook (she mostly warms things up) and Andrew's passion for it (it's a major stress management tool thought he, like me, hates to bake) and the fascinating …
Reply to @Investor: Hmmm ... not exactly.
Mr. Sherman has been clear from Day One that RPHYX is a limited-capacity strategy. Depending on market condition and whether we was willing to add strategies to the portfolio, he had $600M - $1B of capacit…
Reply to @Charles: The key might be the source of the return. Sextant positions itself purely as an income fund which might provide consistent and substantial income distributions. The manager I spoke with (there are two: one plays defense, the ot…
Heigh ho!
MAINX strikes me as an entirely different creature that either of its equity-oriented brethren. So I guess if I were keeping two, it would be MAINX and one of the others.
Here's the picture of the three since MAINX's launch:
Not a hu…
Yuh ... one of the downsides to being, effectively, a monopoly is that you lose some of the visceral incentive to excellence.
Mr. Rekenthaler, who is celebrating a quarter century as one of the Wizards on Wacker, remains pretty adamant about the ne…
hi, Catch!
JR shared the story with me, with a friendly exchange of emails, before it ran. As of late last evening about 250 people had clicked through. (Update: 278 as of Thursday night, plus 61 from their discussion forums.)
I still think I'm…
Insert "Snowball growls" about here.
The NASDAQ list is the same messed up NerdWallet piece that I wrote about in June. These are not the worst mutual funds - they're the highest-expense share classes of funds with over $125 million in assets and,…
Reply to @Investor: Hi, guy.
Ryan, in an email, agrees that the promotion is part of the fund's succession planning but more in a "steps in front of a bus" than a "walking out the door" way. Mr. Romick is about 49 and, I'm told, excited to come to…
Arrowpoint runs hedge funds now. After the acquisition, Arrowpoint will run the Meridian funds. Arrowpoint's plan is to have Chad and Brian become the new managers for MERDX. Given that they're capable of managing rather more than $2 billion, one…
